Migration is a timeless and increasing phenomenon that affects societies and everyday life on earth. The public discourse on migration has become more polarized with a diminished space for balanced and evidence-based analyses (IOM, 2019).  Migration could be an example of what Larsson (2019) describes as a potentially controversial social issue. Tho, many teachers seem to avoid these kinds of issues or feeling difficulties about how to teach about topics of migration (McIntosh, Todd, & Das, 2019). These difficulties could relate to migration as a, often interdisciplinary topic, with dimensions of both values and knowledge. However, teachers need to be better equipped to teach migration sensitively and effectively across disciplines (McIntosh et al., 2019). One dimension of this equipment could be strengthen teachers´ content knowledge about the phenomenon. If the teaching is based on reconstructed specialized knowledge, it could give pupils´ the opportunity to develop critical thinking and analyses based on evidence. 

This study aims to examine the educational practice about social issues like migration in social studies from a didactical perspective, according to the reconstruction of content, teachers´ choices, and pupils´ knowledge.  In this study, based on educational design research (van den Akker, 2006), the intervention is to support the teachers with specialized knowledge and possibilities to reflect around and transform the content in research- and development circle. The teachers have been tested the planned teaching in three different classrooms, two regular classes and one with newly arrived pupils at age 10-12. 

The empirical material is analyzed from a didactic approach using a framework of Klafkis Categorical Bildung (1985/2001) and the educational practice of Carlgren (2015) to understand the relations between content, teachers didactical choices, and pupils´ knowledge. The results are analyzed according to pupils´ possibilities of developing knowledge to be able to think critical.